Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A certain awkwardness marks the use of borrowed thoughts; but as soon as we have learned what to do with them, they become our own.
The exercise of all the senses is as intense pleasure, as anyone will find, who recovers the use of one after being deprived of it.
Because the soul is progressive, it never quite repeats itself, but in every act attempts the production of a new and fairer whole.
Whatever appeals to the imagination, by transcending the ordinary limits of human ability, wonderfully encourages and liberates us.
The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.
Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next age.
Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less.
Go cherish your soul; express companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then will the faculties rise fair and full within.
The wise man always throws himself on the side of his assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to find his weak point.
Go out of the house to see the moon, and't is mere tinsel; it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey.
A person's life is limited but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to serving the people limitlessly.
My garden is a forest ledge Which older forest s bound; The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge, Then plunge to depths profound!
Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are.
These times of ours are series and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.
The soul is not born; it does not die; it was not produced from anyone Unborn, eternal, it is not slain, though the body is slain.
In terms of a "career," I never have long-term plans, and certainly don't want to spend several years, say, writing a "long" novel.
Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.
In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us.
Wit is the salt of conversation, not the food, and few things in the world are more wearying than a sarcastic attitude towards life.
The only truly shocking thing about last Tuesday's election is that the Democrats didn't do far worse, or as badly as they deserved.
[Nuclear weapons] now I think I mentioned around 27,000 and during the Cold War the total global arsenal was on the order of 70,000.
Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.
The spacious firmament on high, And all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens, a shining frame, Their great Original proclaim.
Who rant by note, and through the gamut rage; in songs and airs express their martial fire; combat in trills, and in a fugue expire.
Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused.
Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.
In the 1950s and 60s, geopolitical intrigues did not much engage masses in Asia and Africa; it was something for elites to sort out.
The Dalai Lama can claim the sanction of the Buddha, who is said to have altered his teachings in order to reach a diverse audience.
So it is that Lonely Places attract as many lonely people as they produce, and the loneliness we see in them is partly in ourselves.
None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.
Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good. 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.
Government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves.
Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent. All are needed by each one; Nothing is fair or good alone.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.
Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing, and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million fresh particulars.
Of course, money will do after its kind, and will steadily work to unspiritualize and unchurch the people to whom it was bequeathed.
Every burned book or house enlightens the world; every suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth from side to side.
We love it because it is self dependent, self derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
But in every constitution some large degree of animal vigor is necessary as material foundation for the higher qualities of the art.
Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature.
Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.
He who has acquired the ability, may wait securely the occasion of making it felt and appreciated, and know that it will not loiter.
In the death of my son, now more than two years ago, I seem to have lost a beautiful estate,--no more. I cannot get it nearer to me.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.
Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters.
Our chief want in life, is, someone who shall make us do what we can. This is the service of a friend. With him we are easily great.
Nations have lost their old omnipotence; the patriotic tiedoes not hold. Nations are getting obsolete, we go and live where we will.
We do what we must, and call it by the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now.
There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.